Saturday, September 26, 2009

Can you imagine waking up to this video/song in the morning, and having your brain upload the chorus (A still more glorious dawn awaits / Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise / A morning filled with 400 billion suns / The rising of the milky way)?

My head would have exploded.

This is, for those who don't know, a video editing mash-up of sorts of Carl Sagan's epic COSMOS series from 1980. I was ten at the time of its broadcast, just learning myself about the world around me, awareness of the globe, of history and literature and space and time. And here came Sagan, presenting astronomy and physics and mathematics (and even biology to explain how humanity can even conceive and think of the universe where other animals can't) in simple, easy to learn concepts. I think he caught a lot of flack from hard scientists for 'dumbing down' as it were those scientific fields. The critics were wrong. Sagan probably did what few scientists, and indeed what few philosophers and theologists, could do: he helped explain where we (humanity) were in the vast cosmos (a small blue dot on a thin sunbeam).

Lyrics posted below. Highlights are mine, where the song touches my imagination the deepest. (The song starts with Carl Sagan apologizing for his attempt to sing. He begins to whoop and caw like a bird, which is edited into a sampled backbeat.)Lyrics:

Sagan:If you wish to make an apple pie from scratchYou must first invent the universe

Space is filled with a network of wormholesYou might emerge somewhere else in spaceSome when-else in time

The sky calls to usIf we do not destroy ourselvesWe will one day venture to the stars

Chorus:A still more glorious dawn awaitsNot a sunrise, but a galaxy riseA morning filled with 400 billion sunsThe rising of the milky way

The Cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truthsOf exquisite interrelationshipsOf the awesome machinery of nature

I believe our future depends powerfullyOn how well we understand this cosmosIn which we float like a mote of dustIn the morning sky

But the brain does much more than just recollectIt inter-compares, it synthesizes, it analyzesit generates abstractions

The simplest thought like the concept of the number one Has an elaborate logical underpinningThe brain has its own languageFor testing the structure and consistency of the world

Chorus

The sky calls to usIf we do not destroy ourselvesWe will one day venture to the starsHawking: (Rolling in like a rap artist cohort, like Snoop Dogg to Dr. Dre, singing counterweight)For thousands of yearsPeople have wondered about the universeDid it stretch out foreverOr was there a limit

From the big bang to black holesFrom dark matter to a possible big crunchOur image of the universe todayIs full of strange sounding ideas

Sagan:How lucky we are to live in this timeThe first moment in human history When we are in fact visiting other worlds

Chorus x2

The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic oceanRecently we've waded a little way outAnd the water seems inviting...